Participating in the Pledge Accountability Report

Contact
Eligibility
Cost
Time frame
Registration
Data delivery
File formats
Required data
Data cleanliness
Obtaining the report


Contact

Boris Levitin
WGBHResearch
Email: Boris_Levitin@WGBH.org
Email from PBS Express: Boris_Levitin@WGBH.org,internet
Phone: 617 300-3814


Eligibility

Primary-service stations in Nielsen metered markets.


Cost

None, other than your effort in preparing the data. The report is funded by PBS Development.


Time frame

The report has three annual editions, following the March, August-September and December pledge drives.


Registration

To participate, please contact us before or during the drive and let us know your drive's start and end dates, the projected data delivery date, and the contact person at your station. Participants in prior reports will receive an email reminder during the drive.


Data delivery

Please email your data, either in an attached file or in the body of the message, within one to three weeks from the end of your drive. If you need more time, please do let us know.


File formats

We can accommodate almost any major spreadsheet or word processing file format, as well as ASCII (plain text). If we cannot read yours, we'll contact you to discuss alternatives.

However, we are a little less omnivorous with regard to the organization of data within your file. We would appreciate your following a few simple data cleanliness rules.


Required data

For most stations, we study only pledge breaks handled by volunteers, as other methods of pledge-taking (such as external phone banks) have generally proven to be far less efficient. However, we add spill-over income from external phone banks during volunteer-handled breaks, whenever it is reported. Contact us to request the inclusion of breaks that rely solely on external phone banks, if their revenues are substantial and accurately reported for each program.

The report is further restricted to evening fundraising only (starting with the early fringe daypart) on weekdays. It examines all fundraising on weekends.

We need to know the following about each program broadcast that fits the above criteria:

• The program name
• The date of the broadcast
• The start time of the broadcast
• The end time of its terminal break (the break immediately following the conclusion of the broadcast). If this is within several minutes of the start time of the next program (as it usually is), you don't have to supply it. However, always be sure to include it for the last program of the day. If volunteer-handled pledging ends before the broadcast is over, we need to know the end time of the last volunteer-handled break.
• The total dollars pledged
• The number of minutes spent in pledge breaks

While our report looks at entire broadcasts, we will also accept data sets broken down into individual pledge breaks. It should include at least two of these three data fields: break start time, break end time, break duration.

If in the middle of your pledge schedule for a given day you have a program thats is not pledged (this is frequently the practice with current-affairs programs), please include it in your report (with the minutes-pledged set to zero and the dollars-raised field left blank), so that all time slots are credited correctly.


Data cleanliness

Here are a few simple ways to save us a great deal of time:

• The data for each program or break should be on its own line. Please do not use more than one line in your file for each program or break; doing so considerably complicates the automated processing on our end.
• If you do not use spreadsheet software (such as Microsoft Excel), you may delimit your data (separate the fields in a record) with tabs or commas, or you may send us data automatically aligned with spaces (such as Team Approach output). Please, however, never use a combination of these methods, as such files are usually impossible to parse automatically.
• If you submit break-by-break data, the program name field in all break records for a particular broadcast must match exactly, down to the last character; otherwise, our software will not be able to consolidate breaks into programs. If you cannot do this, just leave the program name field blank for all breaks after the first.
• Please enter each time properly, with a colon separating the hours and minutes, and either in 24-hour format or with an AM or PM suffix. If you use a spreadsheet, never prefix a single quote to a time or date to force it to be interpreted as a text string.

Obtaining the report

We will be releasing data on this site as we process them. Currently, PBS Development also mails two printed copies to the program director and fundraising manager at each station. To request additional printed copies or change the distribution list, please contact:

Stephanie Curry
PBS Development
Email: scurry@pbs.org
Email from PBS Express: SCurry@PBS.org,internet
Phone: 703 739-8133


Thank you for participating

This ongoing evaluation of Public TV's fundraising efficiency would be impossible without your participation. If you have any comments or suggestions, please contact us.